User:Cjm5325
Blog #1
Got our printer up and running and started brainstorming different design improvements in order to build another printer based on scarcity of parts, which should be exciting. Thingiverse is a great site with a lot of cool things uploaded by users. Some particularly interesting to me:
Useful awards go to: 1. Banana Slicer 2. A cup As someone who has two dogs who love bananas, a banana slicer would be extremely useful for me to divy up a banana for their snack time. Or for a banana and peanut butter PBJ for myself. The second - a cup - is also very useful to hold whatever; you could even print your own party cups with designs on the side to indicate whose is whose.
Artistic / Beautiful awards go to: 1. A Ford Engine Block Engines are works of art. It was an easy decision for me as someone who admires engines.
Pointless / Useless awards go to: 1. Oreo Holder Interesting, but rather pointless unless it's used for dunking.
Funny / Weird awards go to: 1. A Minion - definitely funny Despicable Me was a funny movie and I love the minions from it, this print is a winner.
Scary / Strange awards go to: 1. Low Polygon Mask It seems a little strange to me.
After reading this article: How Corporations Kill Creativity and watching this video: Charlie Rose interviews a successful Designer I've reflected to think a little about myself. I would a consider myself a tinkerer, starting with building and salvaging computers many years ago until today. I would also consider myself a tinkerer without the time or inclination to tinker since school drains a lot of my willingness to do anything technical. School also kills your creativity like Corporations do, but that's another topic.
I don't know many tinkerers, and if I were to answer yes it would be that I know people who tinker with code; I know only one or two people who tinker with cards and are "fix-its" so to speak. With regards to corporations and tinkering, I think it's quite absurd that if you buy a product that you are not allowed to do whatever you want with it thereafter (like the whole PS3 debacle). I feel if you did not buy a license for something and you own a physical item that you should be able to do whatever you want with it; anything else is wrong to me.
An interesting quote at the end of the article is "...preserving the habitat of the tinkerer is one of the few time-proven ways we as a nation can get back on track", to which I have to say that tinkerers will tinker since that is their nature. We don't have to worry about preserving their environment; enterprising tinkerers will come up with companies and hobbyist tinkerers will have good experience that will help them in whatever their profession may be.
It's nice to see that his newest project with his daughter is a 3D printer because he seems like a very forward-thinking person and that it hints at a good future for 3D printing. I think there's a lot of things to learn from this man in terms of his design principles and his company - putting very different disciplines, backgrounds, and through processes together in order to come up with good ideas. Our current printer group consists of 3 CMPSC majors and an EE major and I wish that we had an ME or otherwise to mix things up a bit in the brainstorming sessions.
